Abstract

Globally, land use change and management have declined soil organic carbon (SOC), thus emitting more CO2 contributing to global warming. Here we review factors that control the fate of soil organic carbon. We found that dry tropical soils are considerably away from carbon saturation, and thus have the potential for high carbon sequestration, if managed properly. Integrated indicators have been set up, such as relative availability of inorganic nitrogen pools, carbon management index, macro-aggregate water stability and metabolic quotient. For example, the relative, rather than absolute, availability of inorganic nitrogen pools has been found associated with resource conservation mechanisms in soils.

Keywords

Notes

Acknowledgement

We are thankful to the book editors and reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us in improving the chapter. Also, we acknowledge the financial support from DST-SERB (PDF/2016/003503) and University Grant Commission (UGC), New Delhi, India. PS and RS extend their thanks to Shikha Singh, Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, for helping in drafting the figures of this chapter.

Högberg P, Löfvenius MO, Nordgren A (2009) Partitioning of soil respiration into its autotrophic and heterotrophic components by means of tree-girdling in old boreal spruce forest. For Ecol Manag 257:1764–1767CrossRefGoogle Scholar